Empower Mobile Users with Access to Business Applications
Today’s workforce is spread around the world, making application delivery more challenging. To be productive, remote and mobile users – employees, customers and partners alike
- Require timely access to all types of business-critical information and applications
- Expect this access to be as quick and easy as if they were located at corporate headquarters and being served by a local corporate data center
- Want to use any kind of client device (including laptops and PDAs) and connect over any type of network connection, public or private
Application networking practices that extract application intelligence from network traffic and use that information to tune network behavior (end-to-end between the data center and user) provide a critical supporting role for this move to mobility in the enterprise.
But for IT departments to deliver the best user experience and effectively meet the application delivery needs of this global constituency, a truly architectural approach to application networking is needed to ensure fast, reliable, secure web-enabled applications.
Seamlessly Joining Wireless and Wireline Networks
Complex networking challenges arise when implementing IT infrastructure strategies that combine the evolution of IP-based enterprise applications on the wireline side (including the support of broadband Intranet and Internet access) with the benefits of new wireless technologies (such as IMS, 3G networks, smart phones and WiMax devices), along with the merits of new application networking architectures.
Broadband bandwidth provides the connectivity for mobile data services. But end-to-end responsiveness depends on resolving the high packet loss and latency characterized by data networking protocols. This is especially true for transmission control protocol (TCP), the underlying transport for most web-enabled applications. TCP was not designed for wireless networks which are characterized by high bit-error rates, random loss, bursty traffic and disconnections. In comparison with wireline networks, these all increase TCP retransmission rates, timeouts and congestion. This causes messaging failures, sluggish media delivery and long application response times.
Delivering Optimal Traffic Management
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Coupling on-the-fly application-smart traffic classification with network optimization, content transformation, compression and caching, Radware products boost application delivery speeds up to 1000%.
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Content transformation and manipulation – the ability to rewrite, optimize, and transform content – is a key capability needed to support the variety of end-user devices used by today’s geographically dispersed, on-the-move users. Laptops, smart phones, PDAs and hybrid devices all have varying capabilities, so business applications must be transformed to optimize the user’s experience for a specific device. Content transformation is one of the core services provided by Radware’s open service application delivery architecture. First these application-smart switches determine what end-user device is being used. Then based on this information, images and graphics are delivered to each end user in the most optimal manner while enforcing the enterprise’s policy for optimizing bandwidth, optimizing user experience, etc.
Intelligent traffic management is also critical for mobile data service reliability, performance and growth. Business-smart networking technologies from Radware enable wire-speed classification by extracting granular user, application and content information from packets and redirecting traffic to appropriate compression, acceleration or caching services for mobile application optimization. Global traffic re-direction and server load balancing serve to ensure the availability of applications.
Enhancing the User Experience
AppXcel supports a variety of acceleration services including multiple technologies to mitigate TCP transmission inefficiencies, eliminating their negative impact on application responsiveness. This unique support for Wireless TCP (WTCP) extends the reach of web-based applications to wireless and cellular users. By providing users with full accessibility to all web-based applications (at unprecedented speeds), their expectations for high-quality interaction with applications are exceeded. In addition to TCP optimization, content transformation and WTCP support, AppXcel also employs web compression, caching, and bandwidth utilization controls for fast application and transaction response times and the best end-user experience across the LAN, WAN and the Internet.
AppXcel’s acceleration services are further augmented by the variety of bandwidth management and traffic shaping capabilities of AppDirector. AppDirector enforces Quality of Service (QoS) policies, ensuring that all network elements provide the required priority to specific application traffic. In this manner, service-level agreements (SLAs) can be met, with latency-sensitive applications receiving top priority, providing users the optimal experience no matter where they are located.